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by HWR_14 1604 days ago
> I find it intriguing that only in the digital age have we sort of decided that the creator of something doesn't get to dictate the terms of its use.

Except that's not true. Mark Twain and Shakespeare cannot tell you you're interpreting their works incorrectly. JK Rowlings cannot stop you from making paper mache out of her books. I can timeshift and spaceshift content with tape recorders, VCRs, TiVo and more.

1 comments

That may have been a poor choice of words on my part. I am struggling to come up with a better choice.

I guess the analog would be “Ms Rowlings, I think the price of your book is too high, so I am going to pay you whatever price I want to. You don’t get a choice”

Someone spent time and energy to create something, and decided that annoying ads are the price of their labor. People seem to think they now deserve the labor without the price that the creator has chosen.

In almost all your scenarios they are predicated on having compensated the author in some way. Blocking ads is consuming the content without compensating the author in any way.

Then tying it to the digital age was a strange choice. People have infringed in copyrights since before electricity, operating manual printing presses to do so.